On the day I send kids back to school, God “just so happens” to have me writing up a few Bible study questions on Hannah “lending” or entrusting the son, Samuel, that God had given her (1 Samuel 1:21-28).
Handing over, surrendering, or entrusting things to God isn’t as easy as it sounds. We don’t like to let go of control, even though we ultimately know everything is better in God’s sovereign hands, and even though us having any ounce of “control” is just an illusion.
But entrusting things to God reminds us how vulnerable we, or our kids, truly are. These feelings, or this place of surrender, is typically the last place we want to be, and yet, it’s the very place God knows we need to be. Faith and trust aren’t really needed until these sorts of moments.
Hannah’s story shows us what it looks like to entrust things to God, but her story, and Samuel’s story, shows us how God ultimately takes care of whatever is put in His hands. Hannah said, “Therefore I have lent him to the LORD. As long as he lives, he is lent to the LORD” (1 Sam. 1:28). Samuel would grow and mature. He would become a faithful prophet of God and a man who anointed Israel’s first two kings (Saul and David).
Richard Phillips writes, “The faith that receives God’s gifts also returns God’s gifts, using them to serve God’s cause and advance his kingdom. Samuel would always be Hannah’s child, but as she had received the boy in stewardship to God, she was happy to make him God’s child and God’s servant forever. Those who use God’s gifts in this way are never losers but always gainers in the end.”
With both of our kids, we participated in a family dedication where we as parents made five promises to our church and children. The promises originate with David and Sally Michael and their ministry, Truth78. The second promise is to “surrender worldly claims on our children.” The description of this promise reads:
“Because our children need what we ultimately cannot provide, we dedicate them, we surrender worldly claim, and we entrust them to the only One who can, in hope that they will belong wholly to Jesus Christ, forever.”
The phrases “surrendering all worldly claim” and “we entrust them to the Only one who can” [provide what they most need] reminds us we can’t control, fix, or guarantee most things in their life. We can’t save them. We can’t decide their path, take away pain, or ensure their safety or health. We can’t convince them that sometimes we do know what we’re talking about. Life presents parents with countless opportunities to entrust their children to God.
In hospital rooms where we’ve feared for their health, or late at night when we’re anxious about their well-being or future, we return to this dedication promise. We again surrender control and entrust them to God. We pray over them. We fight to rest in God rather than stay restless in fear and anxiety. And we must keep doing this for the rest of our lives.
Whether it’s your kids or grandkids, or whether it’s a job, finances, a trial, a fear, or whatever else, one thing I know–and one thing the Bible makes clear–is that anything entrusted to the fully trustworthy God is in safe hands.
Hand it over, and then rest, knowing God is steadfast in love, faithful, wise, sovereign, good, powerful, compassionate, and kind. He keeps all His promises. He cares for His people and is at work for them. Trust God as you entrust things to God by rehearsing the promises of God and the attributes of God. In Trusting God, Jerry Bridges, writes, “Trust is not a passive state of mind. It is a vigorous act by which we choose to lay hold on the promises of God and cling to them despite the adversity that at times seeks to overwhelm us.”
But we also need reminded that this isn’t a one time thing. We must entrust, then do it again, and again. Our tendency is to overreach, subtly taking things back into our own hands that we once placed in God’s hands. When we sense our hands clenching around the thing we let go of in the past, or when our minds return to that pattern of thought that demonstrates we’re not trusting God, then we should pause, pray, and entrust things to Him again.
God is, and will be, faithful in whatever is entrusted to Him.
Image is by Lavers, Barraud & Westlake from 1895.
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